


Home Can Be a Group of Four

by oofmilk



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Not A Game, Alternate Universe - Orphans and Runaways, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Living Together, Perverted Male Students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24865531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oofmilk/pseuds/oofmilk
Summary: Monika is sixteen, and living on her own, and finding some roommates along the way.
Relationships: Monika & Natsuki & Sayori & Yuri (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Monika & Natsuki (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Monika & Sayori (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Monika & Yuri (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Home Can Be a Group of Four

**Author's Note:**

> based on [home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24159583) by [devilishMendicant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilishMendicant/pseuds/devilishMendicant)

Monika is sixteen, and has her driver’s license, and an after school job, and that’s good enough proof, in her opinion, that she can live on her own. The authorities and powers that be aren’t inclined to agree, but she’s long since stopped caring what they think. Countless times of having her tears and anxieties and concerns about her parents and their effect on her mental health cast aside aren’t so easily forgotten. So, before the police can dump her in whatever shitty foster home they can get their hands on, Monika shoves whatever she thinks she may want or need (which, actually, isn’t much) from her parents’ house into the trunk of her car and leaves.

She entertains the thought, for nothing longer than a brief moment, of finding some abandoned train out in the middle of the woods and living there à la _The Boxcar Children_ , but if she did that, she wouldn’t have anywhere to park her car. So, no, Monika doesn’t get to live out her childhood dreams of living in a rusty old boxcar. A shame, really, but it can’t be helped. What she does find, in lieu of a retired locomotive car, is a mostly hidden dirt road that leads to a small cabin in the deep woods. To Monika’s surprise, the water and electricity still work, even if the heat is completely busted, and the cabin looks as though no one’s lived in it in years. It’s only natural, then, just like her decision to flee from the police, that she takes her belongings out of her car and makes herself at home.

Living in the cabin isn’t that bad, all things considered. Sure, it gets a little cold at night, and the stove takes over half an hour to raise a pot of water to a boil, even on the highest setting, but it’s _hers_ , completely and totally, and Monika wouldn’t trade it for some government-assigned caregiver. That doesn’t stop the police from trying to catch her when she goes to and comes from school, but she learns where they set themselves up at the end of the day—in front of the school, by her car, outside her classrooms, at her locker—and she learns how to avoid them. Eventually, just like they always do, because apparently they can’t be assed to properly do their jobs, the police give up on trying to catch her and bring her in. The day Monika stops seeing the police on campus, she counts it as a win. 

Word of the deaths (disappearances? No one’s quite sure.) of Monika’s parents spreads quickly, but how could it not when the only other interesting thing in this small town is the theft of the grocer’s chickens? Murmurs and rumors follow her around school, but no one says a thing to her directly. If Monika wasn’t some unattainable object, a person everyone wanted but thought they couldn’t have, before, she sure is now. Not even the administration is sure what to make of the situation, which, in Monika’s humble opinion, is _completely fucking stupid_ , so they just write down in her file that she’s emancipated and leave it at that. 

It’s almost an accident that Monika meets another girl like her. She wishes she could say that it’s completely an accident, but it isn’t, not when she purposely went to the cemetery to see where her parents had been buried. Not that she cares much. Monika supposes that she just… wants some closure to the entire situation. Disregarding her own reasons for visiting, she can’t help but notice a rather small and pitiful funeral being carried out not that far away. She isn’t a mean person, and would normally never call a funeral pitiful, but, well, the funeral she’s watching only has two attendants, not counting the deceased—the priest and the mourner. Something about the sad state of affairs draws her closer. A thunderclap startles her and she clutches her umbrella tighter. It’s raining, because of _course_ it is, there’s a funeral, and someone’s trying to punch all the holes in their “movie stereotypes” punch card. 

The girl that’s mourning at the graves doesn’t have an umbrella, but Monika suspects she’s been here long before the service started. She watches the priest say something, rest his hand on the girl’s shoulder, and walk away. It’s a peculiar sight, a funeral so small, but what does she know? Monika didn’t even go to her parents’ funeral. Before she realizes what she’s doing, she steps up next to the girl (who is crying, _hard_ , Monika learns) and covers her already soaked-to-the-bone body with her shitty umbrella. They stay like that, the girl sobbing into her hands and Monika holding up their measly protection against the rain, for far longer than Monika really wants to, but eventually the girl does look up to meet her eyes. Monika recognizes her from her history class at school, and her name is Sayori, and she knows, just like everyone else at their high school, because some private things just _cannot_ stay private, that Sayori has depression and will probably collapse under the despair of the deaths of—Monika checks the headstones—her parents. Monika sighs.

“Come on,” she tells Sayori, and that’s that.

That afternoon she goes home to the cabin and shows Sayori around. She has even less things than Monika, just some clothes, a phone, and a learner’s permit that expires in two weeks, and yet Monika has the distinct feeling that Sayori thinks she’s brought _too much_ with her. But, still, she’s here, and Monika did kind of want a roommate, so now the cabin has an occupancy of two. The police spend less time trying to bring Sayori in than they did Monika, and the latter doesn’t know whether she wants to laugh or cry about it. Probably both, because God, their legal system is _so_ fucked up. Rumors aplenty run throughout the school when the student body sees “that girl that’s got depression” get out of the most popular girl in school’s car. Administration drops the ball on what to do _again_ , leaving Monika wondering just who _is_ running this circus. They just mark Sayori down as emancipated in the end.

Not even three days later Monika and Sayori walk out of the school to see a crowd forming around one of the parking spaces. Which, on any other given day, would have Monika’s full attention, seeing as how she’s student body president and she _really_ hopes no one is duking it out, but today she’s too tired to deal with raging hormonal teenagers. It really doesn’t help, then, that the crowd is blocking her car, which just so happens to be next to the parking spot they’re all crowding around, and this is going to take a while, isn’t it? Grabbing Sayori’s hand to keep her close by, Monika starts to elbow her way through the crowd, calling out various excuses of “Coming through!” and “Make way for the student body president!” The center of everyone’s attention is a girl with purple hair (Sayori makes a comment that it’s really cool) staring at a pile of what can only be assumed are her belongings lying in the car-less space.

“What happened?” Monika asks while Sayori tries to get everyone to disperse.

The girl with purple hair offers a small smile, but Monika can see the borderline despair it’s hiding underneath. “I knew this was bound to happen one day,” is all she says.

Monika sighs. She looks at the pile of things taking up the space, then back to the girl, then to Sayori now yelling at everyone to “Scram, or else!”, and the decision makes itself, really. She bends down and picks up a box labeled “books” and pointedly ignores the wolf whistles from the boys trying to look up her skirt. They were in high school for Christ’s sake, could they _be_ any more immature? She stands up straight and snaps a glare in the general direction of the whistling before turning to address the girl.

“What’s your name?” Monika asks.

“M-My name?” the girl parrots. She threads her fingers through a section of her hair. “Uhm, Yuri.”

“Well,” Monika says, shifting the box to her hip so she can gesture Sayori over, “come on, Yuri.”

It takes about ten minutes for them to Tetris-style stack Yuri’s things into the trunk of Monika’s car. The crowd, seemingly disappointed in the lack of a testosterone-fueled fist fight, leaves the girls to their devices. Yuri reveals to them, as Monika is leaving school grounds and searching for that hidden dirt road that will take them to their sanctuary, that her parents didn’t know how or _want_ to deal with—Monika sees her fingers stray to her left arm in the rearview mirror, and it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together—her particular problem. So, like all parents who don’t want to deal with their child’s problems, they took her car and left a note saying “Don’t come home.” Sayori’s almost in tears, but she’s always been emotional, and Monika doesn’t have to ask to know that the cabin is now home to three. The police don’t look for Yuri; administration writes her down as emancipated.

The very next week, a short girl with pink hair storms up to the trio when they’re sitting in the courtyard during lunch. Monika thinks, for a moment that is worryingly too long, that this new girl is going to hit one of them, because she looks _incredibly_ pissed off. The girl doesn’t hit them, much to Monika’s surprise, but she does glare them down like they’ve created an enormous problem for her and her specifically. She doesn’t say anything for long enough that Monika’s about to ask what her problem is, but Yuri beats her to it.

“Is there a problem, Natsuki?” she asks.

Natsuki huffs. “I heard that you three, like, live together or something. On your own.”

The trio share curious looks. _Huh?_

“Uh… Yeah?” Sayori says next. “Monika—“

—claps her hand over Sayori’s mouth. Something about this seems off, though she can’t place what. Is it the police finally deciding to do their job, using Natsuki as a conduit? She narrows her eyes.

“What’s it to you?” Monika asks. “Are you working with the police?”

“The police?!” Natsuki asks incredulously, like the very _idea_ is unfathomable to her. “Hell no! I wanted to ask if… if I could move in with you.”

Monika’s about to reply that she is not philanthropist giving out free homes when Yuri says, “Natsuki, is this about—“

“No! Maybe! What does it matter?!” Natsuki snaps. “Is it a yes or a no?!”

Yuri gives Monika a pointed look. She sighs deeply and regards Natsuki again, finally relieving Sayori of the hand clamped on her mouth. Natsuki is fidgety, constantly fiddling with her bows or sleeves, and doesn’t look at them for longer than she has to. Monika catches Sayori and Yuri looking at her out of the corners of her eyes, and she knows she’s going to lose whatever argument they’ll have if she tries to say no. She groans lightly before nodding.

“Yes.”

One simple word is how the group spends the rest of their lunch scheming to get Natsuki away from her father, and how they find themselves at Natsuki’s house at two o’clock in the morning. They create a chain of sorts, with Natsuki lowering things from her bedroom window, and Sayori passing them to Yuri passing them to Monika placing them into the trunk of her car. They work in a terrified silence, Natsuki’s warnings of her father and what he’ll do to all of them if they’re caught hanging over them like a dark cloud, and it spurs them on to work as quickly as they can without damaging Natsuki’s things. She by far has the most belongings out of their group, but, in all fairness, she’s the only one who has the luxury of taking time to collect what she wants from her house. A light flicks on in another bedroom just as they finish putting Natsuki’s belongings into Monika’s car, and then their panic really sets in. Natsuki all but throws herself out her window, which, thankfully, as Monika does _not_ have the means or the funds to make a late-night hospital trip, isn’t that far away from the ground. They scramble over each other in their rush to get in Monika’s car and—“Drive! Fucking drive!” Natsuki yells—get away from her father. They leave him spitting and swearing on his front porch. The police only look for Natsuki for maybe twenty minutes at _most_ before getting bored and quitting. Administration practically sighs before marking her emancipated.

A few weeks later, after they’ve all settled into the cabin and know how to exist around each other without getting in each others’ ways, Monika pitches a new club to administration. They try to deny her, something is said about insufficient funding, but Monika levels them with a glare that leaves no room for argument, and they let her have her way. She breaks the good news to the girls, _her_ girls, and they’re ecstatic.

* * *

“So yeah! That’s the story of how we got the Literature Club started!” Monika says at the end of her story.

Masashi stares at her, then each of his clubmates in turn. “Holy shit. You guys went through all that? I mean, I’ve known Sayori all my life, so I knew her parents died, but…”

Sayori giggles before throwing her arms around Yuri and Natsuki, pulling them in close despite their objections. “Yep! And it’s all thanks to Moni that we’re here today~!”

“Aw, Sayori, it’s really nothing…!” Monika denies.

“Just shut up and accept the compliment, Pres,” Natsuki huffs. “Jeez.”

Yuri carefully removes Sayori’s arm from around her shoulders and stands up. “Well, now that Monika is done telling her story, I believe the tea is ready.”

“Oh yay! I love your tea!” Sayori says. She pulls Natsuki to a stand and over to the kettle.

Masashi hangs back, watching them eagerly buzz around the kettle while they await their cup of tea. A fond smile spreads across his features. He almost doesn’t notice Monika standing next to him, but that could be because she’s only five-foot-three and he’s pushing six-foot-one. They stand in silence for a long moment before Masashi says anything.

“I think you did a great job, Monika,” he says.

Monika looks aside, a faint blush dusting her nose. “Thanks, Masashi,” she says. She pushes him lightly. “Now go get some tea.”

**Author's Note:**

> masashi is the name of the protagonist in this fic, if i didn’t make that obvious!


End file.
